Is this MS Office's Last Mile?

This is in light of some of the events that have happened in the last few weeks, like the Google-Sun Agreement and some applications/technologies that are very much being talked about(like Thinkfree, AJAX Office Suite etc).

Microsofts Key Strength is the popularity of its Office Suite. We have had a number of free Office Suites like the OpenOffice, Staroffice etc who have not been able to make any significant dent on Microsoft.

Microsofts Office formats like the .doc, .xls and .ppt are still very much closely guarded within the walls of the Redmond giant. While the Word 97 format was publicly documented, all updates to those formats have been withheld from the public domain. The format documentation is however available to Microsofts partners.

These formats are Microsofts strength. Their popularity have forced competitors to support these formats(atleast to extent of the documentation openly available).

As long as Microsoft continues to guard these formats, it will be indeed quite a daunting task to displace Microsoft from its pedestal as the Market leader.

Word 2003 however has an option to use a publicly documented schema called WordProcessingML and Microsoft has stated that it will soon be supporting an XML based format on all its Office products.

The rationality behind this move is tough to explain. In fact, its tough to understand. Im sure the guys at Redmond have their reasons. But yes it certainly will give competitors to have a go at the giant.

There is also the danger of a web based application suite (like thinkfree) gaining popularity over a desktop based application suite.

However having had a chance to use Microsofts web interface to its exchange servers(Outlook) and having seen their browser based implementation of Microsoft Outlook, Im sure competition will have to really get their act together to pose any real threat to the giant from Redmond.